


looking as if she were alive

by skatingsplits



Series: skatingsplits' kinktober 2020 [1]
Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M, Kinktober 2020, Masturbation, Nude Photos, short but not that sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26821495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatingsplits/pseuds/skatingsplits
Summary: Perhaps if he were a different sort of man, he wouldn't have wanted to keep the photograph. Perhaps if she were a different sort of woman, he'd have felt guilty every time he looked at it. But he isn't, and she isn't, and he's long since given up feeling guilty about anything at all. Much less anything to do with her.
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Series: skatingsplits' kinktober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956301
Comments: 9
Kudos: 25





	looking as if she were alive

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Title from Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess".

Perhaps if he were a different sort of man, he wouldn't have wanted to keep the photograph. Perhaps if she were a different sort of woman, he'd have felt guilty every time he looked at it. But he isn't, and she isn't, and he's long since given up feeling guilty about anything at all. Much less anything to do with her.

Even if he was wracked with shame, Asriel isn't sure he'd have been able to stop himself.

It's the eyes that draw him back to it. The rest of her is divine (and the blasphemy of using the word even in his thoughts feels spitefully good); green satin pools around her waist, her chest bared and her lower half teasingly hidden from view, a vision that recalls a hundred hasty explorations of her body where neither of them had taken the risk of properly undressing; light glints over her hair in a way that he doesn't possess the artistic vocabulary necessary to describe but that stirs him nonetheless; the pink of her unpainted mouth matches the pink of her nipples so well that it could almost make him believe in the intelligent design of the universe. All delightful, all things that would arouse any man who glanced at it for a fraction of a second.

But her eyes, surely, could only appeal to him. They're undoubtedly beautiful but the blazing harshness in them isn't exactly what one would expect to see on a typical French postcard. She stares out at him, loathing him and wanting him, with an intensity that hasn't faded since she gave him this almost a decade ago.

To this day, he can't understand how she managed it. Her late husband might have had gauchely deep pockets but surely all the money in the world wouldn't have been enough to convince a photographer to take a portrait of a naked woman with half of herself missing. He's almost convinced that she must have rigged a camera up herself, posed in front of it while her little devil of a daemon snapped the shutters. The thought of it, of the monkey's black little hands working away while Marisa stared into the lens, makes him feel ill as much as titillates him, even now. There's always an edge of wrongness when he does this, one that's never disappeared no matter how many times he holds her picture in his left hand and brings himself off with his right. It isn't always necessary, the picture. Sometimes the memories are enough, more than enough. If he closes his eyes he can practically feel her teeth in his shoulder, the wet heat of her around his cock. And it isn't as if he thinks of her every time, either; personal preference aside, he couldn't take Stelmaria's disapproval if it was. There are times, however, that nothing else will do, nothing will stir him apart from a pair of dark, flaming eyes.

Asriel's memories of her small, soft hands are painfully vivid but he doesn't bother to pretend that it’s anything but his own large fingers wrapped around his cock. That way madness lies. And any extra stimulation is entirely unnecessary- with his eyes locked onto the blazing passion radiating from her own, he's panting for breath within minutes, cursing her and begging for her in equal measure as he spills all over sheets that someone else will have to clean.

The picture goes into the second drawer of his bedside table when he's finished, sliding into its place beside half-melted candles and old field reports. Its edges are crumpled and the colours slightly faded and he's well aware that the flick of Stelmaria's tail means that she wishes he'd tear it in two and forget all about it. He's equally aware that they both know he never will. 


End file.
